Apr201325

Staff

The NFL received Wednesday an important and favorable ruling by New York federal court Judge Lorna Schofield in a counterfeiting action brought by the league against more than 1,470 China-based websites offering for sale counterfeit NFL and club-identified jerseys, headwear and other goods.

The Court issued a preliminary injunction order disabling these “rogue” websites so that they can no longer be accessed by consumers and freezing certain payment accounts held by the sites’ operators. Click here for the ruling.

Many of these rogue sites used domain names that incorporated the NFL and club trademarks (for example, officialcowboysjersey.com, nflshop365.com, officialravensauthentic.com) and mimicked the look and feel of official team store sites to confuse fans into thinking they were shopping on an authorized web site. Click here for a comprehensive list of these sites.

The ruling was issued on the eve of the 2013 NFL Draft, an event that is expected to attract more than 45 million viewers and serves as the start of a new season for fans. The Draft also represents one of the hottest windows of NFL merchandise sales.

This is the third such action that the NFL has filed against infringing eCommerce sites. In total, the NFL has disabled over 2,500 web sites, significantly disrupting these criminal enterprises. The NFL was assisted in its efforts on this matter by MarkMonitor, Inc. and Kroll Associates, Inc.